Christof Gasser

Christof Gasser (born September 15, 1960 as Christoph Otto Gasser in Zuchwil, Canton Solothurn, Switzerland) is a Swiss writer.

life and work

Gasser grew up in Zuchwil near Solothurn , where, after compulsory schooling from 1977 to 1980, he completed commercial training in the weaving machine production plant of the Sulzer brothers in Zuchwil, Canton Solothurn . After completing a degree in business administration at the HWV Higher School of Economics and Administration in Olten (today the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, Olten Campus), he worked from 1991 to 2011 in various management positions at the watch movement manufacturer ETA SA Manufacture Horlogère Suisse in Grenchen, which is part of the Swatch Group, of which twelve years Logistics manager and later managing director of the production centers for watch components in Thailand and Malaysia.

During and after his work he took part in various writing workshops and seminars in English and German, among others with Milena Moser and Donna Leon . A career change in 2013 led him to devote himself more to writing novels. With “Solothurn wears black” his first detective novel was published in 2016, followed by “Solothurn streut Asche” (2017) and “Solothurn plays with fire” (2018). The fictional protagonists are the chief investigator of the Solothurn canton police , Captain Dominik Dornach, and the public prosecutor with Italian roots, Angela Casagrande , who comes from Central Switzerland . The Solothurn thrillers usually take place against a global social, political or economic background. Gasser gives the stories local color by anchoring them in the city of Solothurn and the surrounding area. In spring 2020, “Solothurn dances with the devil” will be the fourth book in the crime series with Dornach / Casagrande.

In autumn 2017, Gasser brought out the first novel, «Schwarzbubenland», with the investigative Solothurn journalist Cora Johannis as the main character. Johannis' parents, Transylvanian Saxons (Romanians of German descent ) fled to Switzerland from the Ceausescu regime in the 1960s . Cora herself was born in Solothurn. With his protagonist with a migration background, Gasser wants to underline the integrative diversity of Swiss culture. Cora's international work as a journalist forms the background of these novels. Unlike in Solothurn thrillers Cora Johannis usually determined outside of Solothurn in the entire Northwestern Switzerland and along the linguistic border with French-speaking western Switzerland , which the traditional ties of his German home canton with the French-speaking Switzerland is intended to express. In March 2019 the second novel with Cora Johannis was published with the title «Blutlauenen» - a thriller of the "Huis Clos" genre about a group of friends who were trapped in a hunting lodge in the Bernese Alps by a storm , whereupon a murderer wreaked havoc drives.

All of the titles published by Gasser to date have been on the bestseller lists of the Swiss Book Publishers Association SBVV in the paperback category for several weeks . The “Pocket Statistics 2018 Culture in Switzerland” published by the Federal Office of Culture shows Gasser as the best-selling Swiss author of paperbacks for 2017. In 2018, a German film production company acquired the option to film Gasser's novel “Schwarzbubenland”. In addition to his books, Gasser published various short stories, most recently in the anthology “Angels dream behind the stars - Christmas stories from Switzerland”, published in October 2019 by Paulusverlag Einsiedeln. , wrote for the short story «The Fifth Star». Gasser also works as a guest columnist for the Solothurner Zeitung .

Christof Gasser is married and lives near Solothurn. He is a member of the "AdS - Authors of Switzerland" and the "Syndicate - Association for the Promotion of German-Language Crime Literature".

Novels

Solothurn crime series with Dominik Dornach

• Solothurn wears black. Emons Verlag, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-95451-783-1
• Solothurn scatters ashes. Emons Verlag, Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3-7408-0050-5
• Solothurn plays with fire. Emons Verlag, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-7408-0305-6
• Solothurn dances with the devil, Emons Verlag, Cologne 2020, ISBN 978-3-7408-0624-8

Cora Johannis series

• Black boy country. Emons Verlag, Cologne, 2017, ISBN 978-3-7408-0178-6
• Bloodshed. Emons Verlag, Cologne, 2019, ISBN 978-3-7408-0508-1

Short stories

• The common happiness. published in “Mensch Solothurn”, edition 2018, p. 56
• Dinner for Two - love goes through the stomach. Lecture at the "Solothurn Cabaret Day 2018" on December 28, 2018
• The fifth star. Short story in the anthology "Angels dream behind the stars - Christmas stories from Switzerland", Paulusverlag Einsiedeln, 2019, ISBN 978-3-7228-0933-5

Selected columns

• Go politically correct to the wall. Solothurner Zeitung from October 24, 2018
• Murder alone doesn't make a thriller. Solothurner Zeitung from February 21, 2019
• The call of nature and the divine order. Solothurner Zeitung from June 19, 2019

Web links

• Homepage of Christof Gasser
• Entry about Christof Gasser in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry about Christof Gasser in the lexicon of the association AdS - Authors of Switzerland
• Entry about Christof Gasser on the homepage of the "Syndicate - Association for the Promotion of German-Language Crime Literature"
• Author's website from Emons Verlag, Cologne
• TV report “Detective stories from the neighborhood”, report in “10vor10” magazine, Swiss TV SRF
• Newspaper report “Christof Gasser's new crime thriller has a lot of explosive power”, Solothurner Zeitung of May 29, 2018
• Interview in “Switzerland at the weekend” on criticism of regional crime novels, December 17, 2017
• Report «Blutlauenen - in Christof Gasser's new crime thriller» in «Solothurner Zeitung»
• Report "It stormed like in a crime thriller" in the "BZ Berner Zeitung" to "Blutlauenen"

Individual evidence

1. ^ Federal Office for Culture FOC: Culture statistics. Retrieved October 14, 2019 . 
2. ↑ «Dark Past» - The Schwarzbubenland becomes a crime scene. Retrieved October 14, 2019 (Swiss Standard German). 
3. ↑ The angels dream behind the stars: Christmas stories from Switzerland. Retrieved October 14, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Solothurn wears black | emons :. Retrieved October 14, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Solothurn scatters ashes | emons :. Retrieved October 14, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Solothurn plays with fire | emons :. Retrieved October 14, 2019 . 
7. ↑ Solothurn dances with the devil | emons :. Retrieved October 14, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Schwarzbubenland | emons :. Retrieved October 14, 2019 . 
9. ↑ Blutlauenen | emons :. Retrieved October 14, 2019 . 
10. ↑ Edition 2018. Retrieved on October 14, 2019 (German). 
11. ↑ The angels dream behind the stars: Christmas stories from Switzerland. Retrieved October 14, 2019 . 
12. Jump up against the wall politically correct. Retrieved October 14, 2019 (Swiss Standard German). 
13. ↑ Murder alone does not make a thriller. Retrieved October 14, 2019 (Swiss Standard German). 
14. ↑ The call of nature and the divine order. Retrieved October 14, 2019 (Swiss Standard German).